


Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition

by Nemhaine42



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Headcanon, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-22
Updated: 2016-05-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 01:25:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6932281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemhaine42/pseuds/Nemhaine42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>T'challa assured Steve that it would be worth his while to skulk in the shadows at the airport for a while, and Steve finds he has more friends that he thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition

Steve hid in the shadows of an airport storage building, nervously looking at his watch. Every now and then he’d look up to the skies, then around him to make sure he wasn’t being watched. Officially, Steve wasn’t certain what he was - still a wanted man the world over? Or just the United States? He didn’t know. He didn’t care. Bucky was still persona non-grata, which made Steve a target by association. So for now they’d hide under the protection of Wakanda.

 

Steve and Bucky owed T’challa a lot: not only was he harbouring them - an act of grave consequence if discovered - but he was sticking his neck out even further by pulling on international strings. King T’challa and his Dora Milaje were waiting at the airport’s periphery, no-one was going to look too deeply at the monarch’s fleet of cars collecting a foreign diplomat under tight security. But there was an ulterior mission.

 

Steve didn’t know who was arriving, or even from where, but T’challa assured him they would be bringing all of Steve and Bucky’s belongings from America and Romania. All that was left after various authorities raided them. Steve kept watching every plane that landed, even though there was no way to tell which one it would be.

 

One of the Dora Milaje’s voice crackled over his earpiece, “Incoming flight BA007-X3. Keep it short, Rogers.”

 

He stood up straight and watched closely as a medium-sized aircraft with a British flag on its side touched down and began to taxi over to the nearest gate to his storage building.

 

There were two more security agents around the corner, ostensibly to supervise an offload of cargo but Steve knew better. Wakanda wasn’t taking any chances with Steve or whoever was on that plane.

 

When it came to a stop, and the normal airport crew began their usual procedures, several neatly dressed agents exited both doors - some went to the hold, others formed a security detail. Steve couldn’t help but notice all of them, like the Dora Milaje, were female and all were in a similar pressed and tailored uniform as Peggy had once worn. Down the steps from the forward door came Councilwoman Hawley, someone Steve had not seen or heard from since he and Nat and Sam brought down Project Insight. She wore dark glasses but Steve could still feel her staring right at him.

 

He stayed where he was, in the shade and out of sight but within earshot. He listened and glimpsed what he could as the other agents hurried to move a couple of crates - was that all he had left? - up to the storage bay. The door was opened to where Steve knew there was a van waiting to take their belongings away. He heard Hawley thanking the Dora Milaje for their assistance that morning before she changed her tone and addressed Steve.

 

“I suspect you’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about your legacy, Captain. For good or ill,” she said, still appearing to talk to the guards, “but try to remember that the Howling Commandos lived to tell your tale and they left legacies of their own.”

 

“Not a day goes by I don’t think about that,” Steve answered then lowered his head, “but I’m not sure it counts for much with the rest of the world.”

 

Councilwoman Hawley actually snorted. “Well, as far as you’re concerned, Captain, I _am_ the rest of the world. And those legacies count for a lot with me, given that I am one.”

 

Steve’s head jerked up. He really wanted to look around the corner and talk to Hawley face to face but he knew the Dora Milaje would put him back in his place.

 

“I’ve not always made the best choices,” Hawley said, “but I intend to honour what was left to me by my father: Lieutenant James Montgomery Falsworth.”

 

“You’re Jacqueline!?” Steve gasped. Falsworth’s daughter was eight feet from him and he couldn’t see her. She wasn’t Monty’s granddaughter or great-niece, she was his friend’s child. He’d talked to her, given her information and latterly orders, without knowing. He’d seen a photograph of her as a child in Peggy’s hospital room. He’d laughed at it; some holiday snap from the ‘50s, with Monty looking ridiculous in his shorts, with socks and sandals, still chewing on an old pipe. And with a little girl with a straw hat and no shoes clinging to his arm. He hadn’t asked who Jacqueline Falsworth grew up to be. Peggy hadn’t told him, maybe she hadn’t remembered.

 

“Admittedly my married name does obscure that fact somewhat,” Jacqueline admitted. “He told me lots of things about you, Steve. I grew up on those stories. Papa always said that no-one was ever truly dead if there were still people around to remember them. I know he meant you, and Sergeant Barnes.”

 

Steve didn’t know what to say.

 

“Please think of that whenever you feel alone,” she soothed, “You still have friends in the world, and you’re allowed to ask them for help.”

 

With that she turned and walked towards the main airport terminal, followed by her security guards. The door to the storage bay was closed and apparently locked - with digital security features rather than an old-fashioned padlock - and the Dora Milaje escorted their newly arrived British diplomat through customs. Steve spent a few moments reeling; he’d traced Peggy when he woke up but after finding out all his other friends had already died, he’d felt he would be intruding to follow the others’ lines. But now he felt guilty and stupid; why wouldn’t he want to know Falsworth’s daughter, just as he would have done if he’d lived his life back then? And now she was in a position to help him and gladly offering it. He couldn’t wait to tell Bucky.

 

“Ready to move, Rogers?” the earpiece called. The person on the other end didn’t wait for an answer. The storage bay doors, unlocked from the inside, flew open. The van drove out and parked in such a way that allowed Steve to jump into the back seat unnoticed, while another agent locked the unit back up again.

 

Before Steve had time to worry about being seen, their van was on the move and tucking itself into the fleet of vehicles returning to the palace. In one of the cars ahead were T’challa and Jacqueline. Were they talking about him, and what a stubborn pain in the ass he was? Or, more likely, were they talking about their actual jobs, the pressures that fell on their shoulders that he was only adding to?

 

Steve sighed and looked around the sleek, professional truck. It was probably one of the most secure and advanced transport vehicles he’d been in since the Quinjet. Which summed up Wakanda pretty well, really. To his left he noticed a packing box had been left on the seat, stuffed full of international newspapers from the last few days. He rifled through them, periodicals from the UK, France, Germany. Romania wasn’t too happy about the extrajudicial execution orders that had been planned to be carried out on their soil. Canada’s Prime Minister  also had a few things to say. Most articles pointed out that despite Steve’s title being Captain _America_ , both the Howling Commandos and SHIELD had not been American units - they were _allied_ units - and they made the observation that the US government was not living up to its heroes’ legacies. Other columnists were harsher and called the US as they saw it: a bully.

 

Steve couldn’t find it in himself to disagree. His faith in individuals wavered when they made up a government which was happy to throw its weight around and do what it pleased, at home or abroad. If a man like Thaddeus Ross could become Secretary of State, then Steve would have to wait a long time before America could be home again. But all was not lost if the people in Europe and Wakanda and the rest of the globe could see folly in officially sanctioned actions.

 

At the bottom of the box Steve found an old leather address book. It was worn and stained and it had a sticky label on the front on which had been written ‘FUBAR’ in definitely Monty’s handwriting. Flicking through it revealed years’, decades’ worth of international emergency contacts, some crossed out and replaced in a delicate penmanship which he assumed to be Jacqueline’s. The most recent page had her own direct number and plenty more for friendly ears in Britain, in France, in Canada, in Norway. The names were unknown to him, save a vague recognition of a few connected to Thor. But no matter.

  
‘Sometimes the best thing we can do is start over,’ Peggy had told him. This time he’d have to follow through and mean it. But he had friends, and he had Bucky. That wasn’t nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> One of those British contacts is Ian Boothby. I didn’t like him much in TTDW but we’re often quite harsh to him. So maybe he’s not Hydra, he’s just some hapless MI6 agent who got assigned to Jane and Darcy. Maybe he’s Torchwood or something lol. 
> 
> I felt like Steve doesn’t have the same reputation as Clint or Natasha for having friends in the right places. He’s got T’challa now for sure, whose movie I’m psyched for, but I wanted to give him another one. I don’t actually think Hawley was meant to be Jacqueline Falsworth, who’s in the comics, but it’s my headcanon now so nyeh.


End file.
